Untitled
Artist
Rick Vian
(American)
Date2008
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions24 × 18 in. (61 × 45.7 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineGift of Dennis Nawrocki, 2014
Object numberUAC6142
Description“LIFE WITHOUT ART IS STUPID”: Rick Vian’s pithy rallying cry in support of the arts can be found pasted on billboards and stuck to bumpers around Detroit and beyond. His own life has been infused with art; he has been part of numerous exhibitions since the early ’70s, and has worked as a musician, set designer, videographer, curator, and lecturer, as well as a painter. His early canvases were fields of flickering color and squiggly marks, anchored by ellipses and other geometric shapes. His paintings since have ranged from multifaceted abstractions, to realistic northern Michigan landscapes, to expressionistic images of campfires and bodies of water. At bottom, though, Vian says there is “a certain ‘grid’ underlying my work, which I use as a shape and form generating matrix.” This idea grew from the artist’s observations of trees — not of the patterns formed by overlapping branches as such, but of the “habits” of growth specific to each species, over which individual variations form. The structural qualities of trees also lend themselves to compelling compositions. WSU’s painting from 2008, for example, seems both organic and regimented; the gnarled roots and grasping limbs of a stand of ancient-looking trees crisscross and fragment the background into pale gray, sunny yellow, and bright blue shards of negative space. The naked branches silhouetted against the glowing sun may evoke a clear, brisk winter’s day in Michigan.Text by Sean Bieri
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Now retired from his position as assistant professor at the College for Creative Studies, where he earned a BFA in 1972, Vian also taught for a time at Wayne State University (MFA, 1974), as well as at Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne County community colleges. A retrospective of his work was held at the Janice Charach Gallery in 2016. In 2009, he began a partnership with Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project to help spread the word that, “Life without art i
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